LOUISE BERLIAWSKY NEVELSON

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

True strength is delicate.

A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.

I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.

The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.

We must create our own world.

I was discouraged about life, discouraged about people being blind, but I don't think I had a day that I ever questioned creativity. There has never been a day like that.

When you are doing a piece you are with it. You don't want to wait until next week, when experience will have given you something else.

And I saw darkness for weeks. It never dawned on me that I could come out of it, but you heal. Nature heals you, and you do come out of it. All of a sudden I saw a crack of light ... then all of a sudden I saw another crack of light. Then I saw forms in the light. And I recognized that there was no darkness, that in darkness there'll always be light.

I feel totally female. I didn't compete with men and I don't want to look like a man! I love being a lady and dressing up and masquerading and wearing all the fineries. I'm breaking down the idea that the artist has to look poor, with berets.

It gave me great pleasure to think that I could take wood, make it good, and make people like Rockefeller buy it with paper money.

I've been so lonely for long periods of my life that if a rat walked in I would have welcomed it.

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

I feel that women 'and men,' but I mean the 'individual,' can be totally feminine and still be totally powerful.

I think that in the sexual act, as delightful as it can be, the very physical part of it is, yes, a hammering away. So it has a certain brutality.

I'm a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working. ... In my studio I'm as happy as a cow in her stall.

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.

I still want to do my work. I still want to do my livingness. And I have lived. I have been fulfilled. I recognized what I had, and I never sold it short. And I ain't through yet.

You know when I decided to become professional - that means to expose yourself naked to the world with the other creative minds - I said, 'I'm going into areas I don't know. I might just fall right down to hell and kill myself.

But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all.... You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.

You must create your own world. I am responsible for my world.

I believe that the physical is the geography of the being.

I believe in my work and in the joy of it. You have to be with the work and the work has to be with you. It absorbs you totally and you absorb it totally.